My Personality? Yes.

Architects are defined by their confidence, logic, and exceptional decision-making, but all of this hides a turbulent underbelly – their emotions. The very notion of emotional expression is synonymous with irrationality and weakness to many Architects, a display of poor self-governance and fleeting opinion that can hardly stand up to the enduring light of factual truth.

This mistrust of emotions is understandable, as Feeling (F) is the most weakly developed trait for Architects – like any complex tool, skilled hands can use it to remarkable effect, while untrained hands make clumsy and dangerous work.
People with the Architect personality type take pride in remaining rational and logical at all times, considering honesty and straightforward information to be paramount to euphemisms and platitudes in almost all circumstances. In many ways though, these qualities of coolness and detachment aren’t the weapons of truth that they appear to be, but are instead shields designed to protect the inner emotions that Architects feel. In fact, because their emotions are such an underdeveloped tool, Architects often feel them more strongly than many overtly emotional types because they simply haven’t learned how to control them effectively.

Architect (INTJ) personality and emotions
There Is Not a Truth Existing Which I Fear

This is a challenging paradigm for Architects to manage, especially younger and more Turbulent types who are already less confident than they would like to appear. These feelings are contrary to Architects’ idea of themselves as paragons of logic and knowledge, and they may go so far as to claim they have no emotions at all. This does not mean that people with the Architect personality type should be seen as, nor should they aspire to be, cold-blooded and insensitive geniuses living by the mantra that emotions are for the weak. Architects must understand that this isn’t the case, and isn’t ever going to be.

More mature and Assertive Architects find more useful ways to manage their feelings. While they will never be comfortable with a truly public display of emotions, Architects can learn to use them, to channel them alongside their logic to help them achieve their goals. While seemingly contradictory, this can be done in several ways.

Firstly, Architects are goal-oriented, with long-term ideas founded on sound logic. When something does cause an emotional reaction, good or bad, that energy can be used to further those goals, aiding rational and pre-determined plans. Secondly, emotions are figurative canaries in the coal mine, indicating that something is off even though logic can’t see it yet. These feelings can help Architects to use their logic to ask questions they may not have thought to ask. “This is upsetting. Why? What can be done to resolve it?”

Question With Boldness

In this way, emotions are not Architects’ way of addressing a decision, but rather an indication that a decision needs to be addressed. Architect personalities’ Thinking (T) trait acts as a protective big brother to their Feeling (F) trait – seeing that something has upset the less able sibling, it steps in to take action, letting logic do the talking and resolving the condition rather than complaining about its consequences.

There comes a time though, when logic is simply the wrong tool for the job, when there just isn’t a rational solution to a problem, and it is in these situations that Architects must use their Feeling (F) trait most clearly. Architects would do well to practice this from time to time, or at least be aware of it, because however they may try, it is impossible to truly separate emotion from the decision-making process. The fact is that Architects do feel, and deeply, and this makes them better, not worse.